The three days of Christmas

This year, Andy and I continued some of our earlier Townsville Christmas traditions, which are beginning to cement themselves into place as proper traditions. Basically, we spread things out across Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and Boxing Day.

We have Christmas dinner on Christmas eve. We had, of course, a stuffed seitan roast with yuba skin. I had planned to cook this on the BBQ, so as to avoid heating up the house, but then Christmas eve was rainy and by dinner time it was a chilly 25 degrees, so into the oven it went! 

Christmas dinner, waiting to go in the oven.

The yuba didn't crisp up as much as usual, for some reason, but it was still good.

Along with the seitan roast, we had okra-corn bread stuffing (based on Susan V's recipe), mushrooms baked with garlic-parsley-butter, some (bought) cranberry jelly, and spinach. We topped the seitan with mango chutney, made that morning (which will get its own post soon). 

Tika got a veggie pig's ear, and Nacho had some pumpkin, one of her favourite treats. 

For dessert we had mango-fruit mince ice cream, made with the tropical fruit mince I also used for tarts.

Served up with little pastry bits, the baked scraps from when I made my tarts.

Christmas morning, Andy woke with the beginnings of a sinus infection or summer flu or something, so I cooked him up a nice breakfast and a hot lemon. For breakfast we had creamy mushrooms, spinach, and Vegg (another thing which will get its own post soon) with toast and tea. 

After brekky, we took Tika to the beach, where she chased plenty of sticks, ran around with a few other dogs, and ate too much salt water, making herself a bit sick as a result. 

Then it was back home for a cup of tea (for Andy), a mango-ginger-rum smoothie (for me), and some chocolate and white chocolate spiders, as we opened the gift(s) Andy's parents sent us. 

It was in pieces when we opened it, but a phone call cleared things up - it's a seedling tray, and a little thing for making seedling pots out of old newspaper.

For lunch, Andy cooked up some mushroom burgers with spinach and bacon bits and cranberry jelly.

Which we ate with salt and vinegar potato chips, another of our solidifying christmas traditions.

We spent the rest of the day doing not much - reading books, watching a movie, pulling some weeds in the garden, and drinking rosella cordial.

Our first harvest of rosellas was a small batch, so I only made a little cordial.

Then we ate leftovers for dinner, adding some more mushrooms and spinach to our leftovers, because Andy got a lot of both on Christmas Eve, reduced to clear!

Now all that's left is one piece of seitan, and some sweets. 

Our Boxing Day was pretty similar. For breakfast, we had mushrooms on toast, with spinach and Vegg.

And we spent the rest of the day eating fruit, chocolate spiders, and panadol (for poor sickly Andy). It wasn't the christmassiest christmas - in fact, it didn't really feel terribly christmassy at all. But it suits us - a christmas full of mushrooms, spinach and mangoes is a success, as far as we're concerned. 

Merry Christmas to everyone who celebrated it!

Mango Mousse Tart

The other night Andy and I had dinner with some friends, one of whom has very recently had to adopt a low GI diet. We had already collectively decided to BBQ some tofu for dinner, which was virtually sugar- and carb-free, and our friends were bringing side dishes, but I wanted to do something more creative than just cut-up fruit for dessert. Partially because I cook for people to show I love them, and partially because I love a cooking challenge.

I did some googling, and found that most of the recipes that came up for low GI desserts were fruit & yoghurt concoctions, or involved stevia, gluten-free flour mixes, and other things I don't have on hand.  I forget how the inspiration struck, but I thought about a fruit tart. I vaguely remembered cooking an oat-based crust from the Ultimate Uncheese Cookbook, and when I looked at the recipe saw that it would need only a little tweaking to make it good and low GI. For the filling, I thought back to a no-bake fruit tart I made several years ago, and decided that some of our steady supply of mangoes would be a good fruit to use.

The results were good, and mainly low GI (anything below 55 is considered low, and 56-70 is considered medium).The tart filling was velvety and gently set, so that it was still a bit wobbly, and was offset nicely by the nutty, biscuit-like base. The only thing I might do differently next time I make this is to quickly blend up the oats, so they aren't so whole. Either way, this was really delicious, and a great way to use mangoes. Might be a nice alternative to some of the ultra-rich desserts people are used to filling up on at this time of year!

Mango Mousse Tart
Crust (adapted from Granola Nut Crust in Ultimate Uncheese)

1 c. rolled oats (GI 51)
1/2 c. desiccated coconut (GI 45)
1/2 c. almond meal (GI 0)
1 tsp. ground ginger
1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 c. sunflower oil
1/4 c. maple syrup (GI 54)

Heat the oven to 180 (350F). In a bowl, mix the oats, coconut, almond meal, ginger and salt. In a jug, combine the oil and maple syrup and stir, then pour this over the dry ingredients. Mix till combined and then press into a pie plate or springform pan. Bake for 10 minutes until just browned. Cool completely.

Filling
3 mangoes (GI 41-60, depending on ripeness, variety, etc)
juice from 1 lime
1 Tbsp. agar flakes
2 Tbsp. water
1/2 c. silken tofu (GI 0)

Put the agar flakes and water into a small dish and set aside for about 10 minutes. Meanwhile, blend together the mango flesh and lime juice until smooth. In a small saucepan, bring the fruit puree up to a boil. Add the agar and boil rapidly for 10 minutes, stirring pretty constantly to avoid mango splashing everywhere. Remove from heat, add tofu and blend until smooth. Pour into pre-baked crust and put in the fridge until set, about 2 hours.

Sneaky Nuts*

In the first few weeks of moving into our house earlier this year, one of the things we planted in the garden was peanuts. We bought a bag full of raw peanuts from a local farmer at the Sunday market and planted some of the nuts.  

For us, peanuts were a slow-growing, very small plant. I didn't hold out great hopes for what they would produce. Even if we didn't get any nuts out of the plants, I figured the nitrogen they produce would be good for conditioning the soil, and the plants would make a good addition to compost. 

Well, we needed to dig up our peanut plants recently because Andy wanted to expand and edge the garden bed, and we were very pleasantly surprised to find all of these sneaky peanuts. Then I read a blog post on Food Feud about spiced nuts, and knew just what to turn these into.

I pulled them off the plant, rinsed off the dirt, and put them onto dehydrator trays to dry out. Then I shelled them - which took ages and made my fingers sore. Then, I roasted them up. In a 160 degree oven (that's about 325F), I toasted them on a baking tray, shaking every now and then, until they smelled nice and started to look toasty. While they were in the oven, I melted together a tablespoon of nuttlex margarine, a tablespoon of brown sugar, two teaspoons of salt, a teaspoon of chilli powder, and a handful - maybe two tablespoons - of fresh thyme leaves (also from our garden). When the nuts were done toasting, I dumped them into a bowl and poured the melty butter-sugar yumminess over and stirred and stirred.

When these cool, they stay sticky. They're sweet, and herby, and then the sneaky chilli powder hits you in the back of the throat. They're all around delicious, and great to have on hand at this snacky time of year.

*If you don't get easily offended, and don't know the Sneaky Nuts reference, here is my cultural reference. 

Tropical giftie tarts

As an anthropologist, I appreciate the importance of gift giving as a tool of affirming relationships, showing appreciation, and just being nice. As an anti-capitalist vegan, I'm not so good with the buying of cheap stuff to give to people. As a cheapo, I'm not so willing to buy expensive stuff! The easy solution is handmade gifts. Last year I made crocheted Christmas ball decoration thingies for my friends at work. This year, I decided to go the food route.

I've never actually had a fruit mince tart, but for some reason this year I decided I had to make them. But then I decided, why not use tropical fruit? I tropicalised a traditional fruit cake a few years ago, when I made tropical fruit cake for our wedding. So the idea implanted itself firmly in my brain, and I had to see it through.

I made the fruit mince on the weekend. It's best to let it sit for a few days if you can, so the fruit soaks up as much of the boozy flavour as possible. We made a pretty giant batch, because we had some fruit that needed using, and also because I wanted to make not only tarts, but also fruit mince ice cream. The amount in the recipe below could probably make 4 dozen tarts, so consider cutting it in half if you don't want that many!

Tropical Fruit Mince
4 small granny smith apples, cored and grated
1 small-ish green-ish mango, peeled, seeded and diced
4 c. dried fruit - I used 1 c. mango, 1 c. papaya, 1/2 c. crystallised ginger, 1/2 c. mixed peel, and 1 c. dried mixed fruit. The dried fruit should be chopped up roughly
1/2 c. macadamia nuts, chopped coarsely (other nuts would work, too, but less tropical...)
3 Tbsp. mixed spice
1 c. rum
200 grams brown sugar
3 Tbsp. nuttelex (vegan butter)
1 lemon, zested and juiced
1 vanilla bean, split in half and with the seeds scraped

In a big bowl, combine the fruit, nuts, and spice.  Mix them all up well. In a saucepan, combine rum, brown sugar, vegan butter, lemon juice and zest, and the vanilla bean and its seeds. Bring this up to a boil, let it boil for 2 or 3 minutes, then remove from the heat. Pour the hot liquid over the fruit, mix it up, and let it stand. When it cools a bit, transfer to a tupperware and store it in the fridge until you're ready to proceed.

I made the rest of the tarts this afternoon. I used bought pastry. I know some people will scoff, but in my opinion life is just too short to screw around trying to make pastry from scratch in the tropics, and with no food processor. Five sheets of short crust pastry was the perfect amount for 2 dozen tarts.

Use a big drinking glass or a small bowl to cut muffin-tin sized circles from your pastry.

Brush the circles with oil.

Then put the pastry, oil side down, into a muffin cup. Fill it up with a scoop of fruit mince.

Cut some pretty shapes from the pastry scraps, and put the pastry-shapes on top of the fruit mince.

Brush them with a little bit of soy milk, and then bake them at 180 (350F) for 20 minutes. When they're done, they need to cool in the pan until they're fully cool. So plan ahead, so you don't have to do what I did and run across the road to ask your neighbour if you can pretty please borrow some muffin tins. Luckily Claire is a very generous neighbour :-D

I baked the extra scraps of pastry on a baking tray, so that I can somehow incorporate them into fruit mince ice cream later on this month. When they're just out of the oven, run a butter knife around the outside of each tart to loosen them up.

When the tarts have cooled completely take them out of the muffin tins.

Wrap them up to give as gifts, or put in the freezer for later, or eat them straightaway.

Now that I have eaten a fruit mince tart, I can say that they were worth making, especially tropical style. Hopefully my work friends like them, you know, for the sake of maintaining our reciprocal relationships and all that.

Starting the Day

Mornings at our house, at least Monday to Friday, look a little bit like this...

Sometime between 4.30 and 5.00am: Tika wakes up, walks to my side of the bed and licks my face. If she's feeling very generous, she goes to Andy's side of the bed and licks him, too. If she's feeling very rambunctious, her tail wags the whole time against the wall, making a noisy thunk-thunk-thunk. We *very politely* ask Tika to go back to bed, and she usually does... for about 10 minutes at a time.

5.00am: I get out of bed, feed Nacho, and take Tika for a walk or, more recently, a run.

We're coming up to the final week of the Couch to 5k program, which is a gradual introduction to running. It's pretty impressive, because I've long been very anti-running, but I really don't mind it now. This morning I ran 23 minutes without dying, or even feeling terribly puffed. Part of the success may be because I didn't really start from couch, but rather from walking-5k-at-a-fairly-cracking-pace. I fill my ears with podcasts, usually either Team Earthling or Progressive Podcast Australia.

5.45-6.00: I get home. Usually Andy's still in bed - the luxury! I try to remember to stop and smell the flowers before I have a good stretch.

We organise lunch for the day, put last night's dishes away, and then, my favourite part of the day: breakfast! I pretty much always eat granola (though on the weekends we are fans of toast, or mushrooms, or pancakes). But, since I started running, I have a very big appetite, so I have been supplementing my plain granola with some chia goo and fruit. The chia seeds have highly concentrated nutrients - plenty of fat and calories, which keeps me full for longer!

Granola with chia goo, bananas and blueberries with soy milk.

Granola, mango, chia goo, and soy milk.

By  7am we've usually fed Tika and hopped on our bikes to go in to work - I love getting in really early, when it's nice and quiet and I can get lots of work done. We're creatures of habit, but I love a solid start to my days!

It's baaaack...

Mango season is here again! It's been glorious so far - Andy went picking around the trees where he works, I was birthday-gifted some beautiful Bowen mangoes (aka Kensington Prides) from a friend's tree, and I was handed a few by a maintenance guy pruning the trees on a school near our house when I was walking the dog. We've been eating mangoes for a few weeks now, and just bought our first bucket from the markets last weekend.

Black bean nachos with mango-avocado salsa.

Obviously Andy and I love mangoes. We are always trying to find ways to make them last throughout the year. We've already made chutney, and no doubt the next few weeks will see our dehydrator full of mango slices and fruit rolls, our freezer full of mango pieces, and our bread maker full of jam.

Tropical sorbet & fresh mango

I'm looking forward to these next few weeks, as Bowen season gives way to the smaller, tart Asian varieties and the big-as-your head Palmers and Keitts. We're even contemplating planting one of these other varieties in our garden, but for now we're very happy to eat lots and lots of mangoes without having to clean up any of the mess.

Birthday Weekend

As I said in my Jervis Bay post, we've had a few busy weekends in a row. The weekend after we returned from the south coast we had many things on - it was my birthday, and it was also the weekend of the Travelling Film Festival in Townsville, and we had our usual garden / house stuff to do.

I saw 5 films with the Travelling Film Festival (Andy saw 2 with me). My favourite of the weekend was easily Searching for Sugar Man, a really intriguing documentary about a musician I'd never heard of before, but wish I had. He was big in South Africa (what the film is about) and Australia, but was a total flop in the US. The first half of the film is dark and broody, but for the second half I couldn't really stop smiling because it was just so... uplifting. I really recommend this movie.



My second favourite was Moonrise Kingdom, a Wes Anderson film. I love his other work, and this one was similarly story-book quirky and just charming.

Paul Kelly: Stories of Me was a really interesting film about Australia's most prolific singer-songwriter. It was a little disjointed - more a biography than a narrative about something interesting, in the way that Sugar Man is.

Lore, a story about the children of an SS Officer right at the end of WWII who have to travel across Germany, and end up travelling with a Jewish man leaving a concentration camp, was heavy and thought-provoking and interesting. It was no light film, but it was worthwhile.

Chinese Takeaway was really sweet - a comedic look at some serious subject matter, but I was taken aback by the way that many people in the audience laughed uproariously at bits that I thought were more sad than funny. That aside, the film was really gorgeous.

In between the films, I had a friend over for dinner on Saturday evening. Then on Sunday (my actual birthday) I had a couple of people over before we went to see Paul Kelly and Chinese Takeaway. Since the films started at 6.30pm, I thought some heartier food was in order. So I made a batch of focaccia, with tomatoes and basil and garlic on top.

And of course some cake. Or rather, macadamia blondies. This is the recipe from Vegan with a Vengeance.

The recipe had a topping involving maple syrup and more macadamias, but I decided to go for a simple salted caramel topping instead. Baked on the blondies for the last 10 minutes, it was a little sticky-sweet without being overly messy.

These, plus some mojitos, made a great Sunday afternoon with friends. So even though the weekend was busy, it was all fun stuff!

Jervis Bay

Hi from Brisbane! I've just come back from the Green Edge with Amy, K & Toby, and Susan. But that's a story for another post. We've had a few crazy-busy weekends in a row. One of them involved a trip to the south coast for Andy's brother's wedding. Getting there was literally planes, trains and automobiles... we flew to Sydney, got (three) trains to Kiama, and then Andy's parents picked us up and drove us down to Huskisson, a very nice little town in Jervis Bay.

Kiama, on the way down the coast.

We stayed in Huski for two nights, and did a bit of sight-seeing around the area. It's a gorgeous place.

We went to nearby Hyam's Beach, which is apparently in the Guinness Book for having the whitest sand in the world. I don't know how it compares to, say, Whitehaven Beach in the Whitsundays, but a lot of my photos were over-exposed because it was so white.

On Thursday afternoon, we made a few salads - Andy's parents were in charge of food for the pre-wedding BBQ, so we helped out with a couscous & chickpea salad, and a pasta salad.

Then we went for a walk on the beach, where we found empty shark's egg shells...

Port Jackson shark egg

And where Andy got really excited over seaweed - his area of expertise now in his new job. We collected some Ulva intestinalis to make fresh seaweed salad, but it was gritty so we didn't eat much of it.

We looked around in the tidal pools, screeching at the icy cold water.

On Friday we left Huskisson and went deep into Booderee National Park, which is actually not in NSW - it's a federal territory - to the cabins where the wedding was. We went for more walks on the beach - this time, not in Jervis Bay, but on the open ocean side. It was windy, and cold, but really beautiful.

Sussex Inlet - a bit more protected but still chilly. 

Andy's brothers and their WAGs on Brewherre Beach.

The wedding on Saturday afternoon was just lovely. At the reception, there was a lolly bar (that's a candy bar in American-speak), which had plenty of vegan lollies. The vegan coconut ice was the hit of the night, but  the choc-PB cupcakes were good, as were the vegan marshmallows.

It was good to be catered for, but even better to see Andy's family, to be part of a beautiful wedding, and to get away from work for a few days!

Book review: The New Scoop

A few weeks ago, I received an email from Alina Niemi, creator of the new vegan ice cream book The New Scoop: Recipes for Dairy-Free, Vegan Ice Cream in Unusual Flavors (Plus Some Old Favorites). She: would I like a copy to review? Me: Uh, yeah.

Actually, the conversation was a bit more nuanced than that. She explained that, coming from Hawaii, her ice cream recipes include lots of weird tropical fruits - which of course I love! Her ice cream recipes also didn't require the cooking method that we usually employ - and anything to make ice cream easier is something I am willing to try. She sent a PDF, and as it is starting to hot up here, the timing was perfect.

We've only tried two of the recipes, because we don't eat ice cream very fast, but I have so many more recipes flagged to try. What I love about this recipe book (I keep wanting to call it a cook book, but that doesn't really work here since there is no cooking) is:

• It is very comprehensive. The first 45 pages are just information about non-dairy ice creams, different types of frozen desserts, key ingredients, and how to actually freeze the mixture to turn it into ice cream (even without an ice cream maker). There are then 100 pages of ice cream recipes. Some use coconut milk, others use tofu, others  non-dairy milk. 
• The flavour varieties are diverse, and there are variations suggested for many f them. I am particularly keen to try Taro Ice Cream (when my taro plants are ready!), Beet-Balsamic Ice Cream, and Peanut Butter & Jelly Ice Cream.
• There is a chapter on yogurt making, followed by a chapter on making frozen yogurt. 
• There is a whole chapter on mochi! I have never actually eaten ice cream mochi, but the room temperature stuff seriously floats my boat. I haven't eaten any since we were in Hong Kong, which was over a year ago, and which is a serious problem. But it sounds not that horrible to make - the only obstacle is that The New Scoop recipe for mochi requires a microwave, which we don't have. However, this chapter has given me lots of ideas, and I will be googling non-microwave methods for making mochi. The chapter in this book has lots and lots of useful tips and information about making mochi, so even if I get a recipe from somewhere else I will be referring back.
• Omg the index! It is good. I get frustrated by some cookbooks because the index isn't very comprehensive, but this will not be one of those books.
• The recipes we've made so far have been yummy!

The first thing we tried was Pineapple Coconut Milk Ice Cream. Making it was much, much easier than cooking: just put pineapple, coconut milk, and sugar into a blender, then chill.

Then freeze. Then eat. It was so yummy, and so easy to make. My friend Belinda said it reminded her of the stuff she eats in Thailand. I thought the cooking was important to get the ice cream to be, you know, creamy... but this recipe totally proves me wrong.

The other recipe we tried was a tofu-based ice cream recipe. Tofu, soy milk, sugar and coffee were blended up together and then chilled and frozen. This ice cream was less creamy than our usual - not bad, but more like the Sanitarium brand stuff you buy in the store here. It also freezes harder. It is delicious, but Andy and I both prefer the coconut milk varieties. 

Apologies for the shonky iPod photo. Camera batteries are dead.

Basically, I prefer this ice cream book to the other one I have, Vegan Scoop. That one basically reproduces the same recipe with flavour variations throughout the book, which quite frankly I can work out for myself. We pretty much use that book for flavour inspiration. But The New Scoop suits us better because it uses actual fruit, flavours we love, and the recipes are a lot more varied. 

Summer is coming up so quickly here in Australia, so I would recommend getting your hands on a copy of this book! Northern hemisphere folks, there are some holiday-ish ice cream recipes, like Spiced Pumpkin, so it's worth a look for you, too, even though it's a bit wintery!

World Vegan Day

Happy World Vegan Month, everyone! Yesterday was World Vegan Day here in our timezone, and with a few extra vegans in Townsville we managed to organise an information table at the university. Stevie and Luc have written up a really great post about it over on the Team Earthling blog. You should really go read that, because it is insightful, it's got all the pretty pictures, and I don't have any of those things to offer at the moment! (Marking, and all that.)